[The Decay of Meaning]

Thought I'd share this with you

An Italian invented the telephone in Cuba

By Hector Arturo

Cubanow.- Was not Alexander Graham Bell, he only appropriated of something that was not his idea, since that, extremely useful machine, to get closer people despite the distances, the telephone, was invented in Havana by the Italian Antonio Meucci.


Carlos Juan Finlay, the prominent Cuban physician and scientist, was not the only case of someone stripped of the recognition for his discovery by the US legal authorities.

The US authorities, during a long time, tried to deny that Finlay was the true discoverer of the Aedes Aegypti as the transmission agent of the yellow fever, despite, in order to demonstrate his theories, he put his own life, as well as the ones of his closest, in danger. A US military doctor, was presented during several years with that merit, until the truth went into open and the Cuban scientist started to occupy his place in the History of the Sciences, recognized by the mankind.

Meucci wrongly dialed….

With the telephone, happened something similar, since the Italian Antonio Meuci, was the only and true inventor of that, so necessary machine. He even made the discovery of how to transmit the human voice using the electric current in Havana.

Born in the Italian city of Florence in 1808, Meucci worked as a customs officer, while doing his studies of Mechanical Engineering and matriculated in the Arts Academy.

Hired as a stagehand at the La Pergola theatre in Rome, he created a system that allowed the workers to communicate between them at certain distances, as well as other devises that facilitated the work at the stages.


Meucci moved to the Cuban capital along with his wife in the decade of 1830 to work at Teatro Tacón located in Prado and San Rafael Streets, same place where now is the Gran Teatro de la Habana, main location of the National Ballet of Cuba, now directed by the first dancer Alicia Alonso.

Here he continued with is passion for the experiments and one day while treating a friend’s illness through electric shocks he realized that he was hearing the voice of his friend from the other room through the copper cables that linked both rooms.

During the next decade Meucci dedicated himself to improve the invention with which he traveled from Havana to New York seeking market opportunities.

While living in the Cuban capital, the degenerative osteoarthritis suffered by his wife forced Meucci to create a fixed connection between his laboratory located in the house basement and their bedroom on the second floor.

In 1855 Meucci improved his prototype with a soapbox and a metallic diaphragm, allowing him to extend his devices to other rooms. This new prototype also allowed him to extend the connectivity between Teatro Tacón stage and the workshop where he worked, that was in an adjacent building.

Five years later Meucci sent his invention to Italy, but no businessman was interested in either financing or manufacturing it. In poverty, Meucci many times considered selling the rights of his invention.

Meucci presented his project to a New Yorker daily newspaper in Italian tongue that supported him in making public exhibits to attract investors who were able to clearly, listen the voice of an Italian singer through the device.

In 1871 Meucci was confined in bed at a hospital for some time, due to serious burns that he suffered at the explosion in the Westfield vessel where he was traveling to New York.

During that period of time his wife decided to sell all of Meucci’s belongings, including the telephone, for six dollars. When the Italian genius tried to get them back, the buyer of used items told him that an “unknown young man” had purchased them.

The tireless Meucci dedicated himself to rebuild and perfect his invention, before someone else patented it and at the end of 1871, with 20 dollars collected among his friends, he presented the invention in New York Patent Office where he deposited a preliminary inscription of the “teletrophone” which had to be renewed yearly.

He renewed the inscription in 1872 and 1873 however next year in 1874 he was not able to obtain 250 dollars which was the fee for the annoying steps.


Busy number….

In 1872 Antonio Meucci made the mistake of trusting Western Union Telegraph Co. honesty. He showed its officers his “talking phone” with all the specifications. He then started to receive pretexts from those officers until finally two years later they told him that they have lost the samples and papers.

In 1876 American Alexander Graham Bell presented the patent for the telephone as being his invention. Coincidentally, Bell worked for Western Union, whose executives had an excellent relationship with the bureaucrats of New York Patent Office.

The executives bluntly explained Meucci that the papers of his provisional patent were lost and the Italian decided to take the situation to the court.

The fixed trials of Meucci against Bell started. In 1886 the District Attorney showed enough proofs in Meucci’s favor and even the famous Thomas Alba Edison wrote a letter to the judge defending the Italian inventor. But the jury’s verdict was against Meucci, because of the substantial fortune that Bell already was accumulating as well as the prejudices in force, that at that time existed, against immigrants in a country precisely founded and developed by millions of immigrants.


Right number …

Meucci died more than 120 years ago, but even now, in te schools of the UNteed States, and of many other countries, teachers and books tell students that the inventor of the telephone was the American usurper Alexander Grahan Bell and not the tireless Italian Antonio Meucci.

Nevertheless more than a century ago after that falsehood, the Congress of the United States was compelled to unanimously approve the recognition of Antonio Meucci as the actual inventor of the telephone.

Italo-American Congressman Vito Fossella presented the motion where he condemned Graham Bell’s fraud and recognized “Antonio Meucci’s work in the invention of the telephone sixteen years prior to when Bell patented it.”

Terrible as a businessman, without any contact in the high circles, without financial resources, immigrant who did not know the language, Antonio Meucci was, nevertheless, a brilliant inventor, who fought until his death in order to receive the honors that he, and nobody else, deserved, by discovering a device that have made possible to revolutionize the mankind.

Havana has the honor of being of being the exact place of the world geography where Antonioo Meucci invented and improved the telephone, while he lived at the Paseo del Prado and worked at the Teatro Tacon.

That’s why can be said that the first phone calls of the world, where made in Havana.

Cuba now.net

[stannis]

That’s why can be said that the first phone calls of the world, where made in Havana.

Is there anything those Cubans can't do, Decay?

[Attila The Nun]

First of all, Antonio Meucci's inventio had othing to do with Cuba. But, it was either Antonio Meucci or Elisha Gray that invented the telephone, not Alexander Graham Bell.

[The Decay of Meaning]

Is there anything those Cubans can't do, Decay?

First of all, Antonio Meucci's inventio had othing to do with Cuba.

No, but it happened in Cuba. Hemingway was from the U.S., Ernesto Guevara from Argentina, but they are still very much part of Cuban history... The whole history of Cuba has been a blend of different things;

Cuba is African, Asian (approximately 1 percent of the Cuban population is Chinese, and it has influenced Cuba in many ways), South American, North American, Carribean, European, Taíno and Siboney. And so, just because the Italian wasn't born in Italy, it happened in the central place, Cuba (the name Cuba is derived from the Taíno word cubanacán, meaning "a central place".).